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I felt my eyes water and could hear my own blood pounding in my ears.

And his lips were at my ear. His speech was strangled, but I heard it clearly. “If there was ever a small part of you that loved me,” he said. “Then you will sink this tunnel. Bury us all.”

And then he was gone, pulled away by the soldiers at his back.

Oxygen rushed back into my lungs.

“Someone tie him up!”

The shaft clanked interminably downward.

There was a sharp thwack as a soldier struck Patrick with a baton.

And somewhere beneath us, cycling up the shaft, a canary sang.